Bad celebrity tie-ins

No celebrity disaster is too tragic to remind us of an interesting fact about cognitive science. Some lowlights from the genre.

Lindsay Lohan is likely to be jailed for violating her probation says The Christian Science Monitor – clearly an example illustrating recent findings from research on how behavior is influenced by like-minded cohorts rather than essential values.

Charlie Sheen? say CBS. I suspect you want to hear about a new study on the cognitive science of self-deception. Guest appearance by Colonel Qaddafi.

An anti-semitic tirade by Mel Gibson reported by The LA Times. Quick, look over there! Wha..? Oh nothing. The neural basis of the alcohol related disinhibition.

The New York Times don’t know how Amy Winehouse tragically died but if you’re thinking what I’m thinking (wink, wink) then why wouldn’t you want to hear about the role of genes, environment and psychology in overdose and addiction.

But this, from The Globe and Mail, surely takes the biscuit. It contains a paragraph that will probably be stolen by The Onion.

But neuroscientists, despite 15 years of brain-imaging studies, are unable to define the circuitry involved in creative thinking. They don’t know what is different about the brains of creative geniuses like Steve Jobs, the visionary co-founder of Apple Inc. who died on Wednesday.

Please, we do not give names and names, we need to study the problem or to study how their function, but the names of people is not important. For me does not matter who win nobel prize, the important thing is what kind of things they discover. Try to be professionals, and forget the tv, the journals, the news and so on. Other people can do it for us. We only need to work, to give lectures and to understand science and neuroscience.

Dr. Drew is a real prostitute for this kind of thing. I watched his show for about five minutes before I felt violently ill and had to shut it off. I’d rather hear a neuroscientist’s explaination for why Americans are so invasive and disrespectful of people’s privacy just because someone happens to be a celebrity.